


The Foreigner Discontinuity Guide

by Karalyn



Category: Foreigner Series - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Continuity What Continuity, I mean I guess kind of reviews, Meta, Reviews, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karalyn/pseuds/Karalyn
Summary: A meta-textual guide for the long, rambling multi-book epic that is the Foreigner series and all its confusing continuity changes and errors.





	1. Foreigner - Book 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I was a kid I had well-worn paperback of the "Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide" which points out all the plot holes, and continuity errors, best quotes, funny lines, etc that go with a TV series that spans literal decades. So that’s kind of what I want to do here. Deconstruction of the canon continuity issues, but with love. Much love. For any atevi readers, I have a deep man’chi to this series and by no means wish to disrespect it. Cherryh gets all credit; clearly she didn’t sit down in the early 90’s and think “GOSH I SHOULD WRITE A TWENTY-ONE BOOK SERIES.” She started out with a reasonable trilogy that had strong plotting and great characters and then, like a human, she fell in love with it and it clearly got away from her. It’s a massive universe of its own and she seems to own some of the most blatant retcons, which I can respect.
> 
> Things that I point out as being divergent from previous writings I will try to classify into probably author error, or ret-con, as well as including any personal headcanon for how I deal with the discrepancy. ("Everyone has been lying to Bren." "Bren has just been hit on the head and is confused.") The first book, pretty much everyone spends the entire book lying to Bren, which makes a lot of the confusing bits easy to write off anyway. The other issue I have a personal bone with and that I’m going to try to track is the seasons, a phenomenon I’ll call “It’s Always Spring in Shejidan,” or “When exactly is Cajeiri’s Birthday Again?”
> 
> COMMENTS WELCOME. It's entirely likely someone else has done this on a message board I'm not a part of, but no one appears to have done it HERE. Let me know what I've missed, and I will add things I have missed and correct things I've gotten wrong.

I’m skipping the “book one” and “book two” parts - the intro of the humans’ arrival and history of first contact, delightful though they are, except to note that at some point in the series, the next planet out from the sun became Maudit, whereas in Foreigner it’s Maudette. Also to note that the planet of the atvei is third out from the sun. Possibly two hundred years of humans living on the planet, however, means it might even just be a language shift in how humans say/write it since that’s not the Ragi name, and Mosphei' is probably more English than it is French.

Chapter 1 – 

The attack on Bren’s garden apartment. Which more than any other item except the important parts of Chapter 13 has stayed the same throughout the series. The trip to Taiben with Tabini was two weeks before the start of the story. Later it's 8 days, (maybe it's two weeks since the *start* of the trip?)

_“…Tabini knew that atevi women had a certain curiosity about him, and it was a joke at his expense.”_

Don’t get me started on the badly-researched smutty dime-store novels featuring humans that get passed around the servant halls in the Bu-javid. They exist. It is fact.

 

_“Banichi, is anybody after me?”_

_"It would seem so, wouldn’t it? I do doubt it was a lover.”_

_"Do you know anything I don’t?”_

_“Many things. Which interests you?”_

I have this personal notion that baby!Bren, being so concerned with keeping his face constantly impassive and being told never to try and make jokes in Ragi (as per a note in Inheritor,) caused Banichi to start a personal crusade to get the paidhi-aiji to laugh.

_But Banichi, unlike the majority of the aiji’s guards, had a license._

It’s so tempting to try to save face and chalk this up to Bren’s super obliviousness to the fact that everyone in his life is a member of the Assassins’ Guild, but it’s clearly Cherryh taking a few books to figure out how the Assassins' Guild works and that’s ok, it doesn't make Bren any less oblivious.

60 provinces and three hundred million people in the Western association. Banichi is from Dajoshu township in Talidi province. At least right now he is!

 

Chapter 2-

_Because he wasn’t just the aiji’s interpreter. He had a primary association that outranked it, an association that was stamped on his skin and his face-“_

More later on the theme of Bren abandoning loyalty to the Mospheiran government. I feel obliged to mention how painful rereading this book can be when measured against the later books, but it helps to remember that literally _everyone_ including Tabini is pretty sure Bren is lying about not knowing about the ship, and EVERYONE is lying to him because they’re sure he’s lying to them, so everything Bren says they are reading subtext into that he doesn’t intend.

_Or where was Banichi and what was that exchange of questions, this talk about loyalties? He couldn’t remember who’d started it._

You did, dumbass, but Jago thought you were verbally fencing with her because everyone thinks you know what you don’t actually know. Also his comments about her man'chi to Banichi she can easily interpret as (mildly insulting) insinuations that he knows they are related, insulting, I imagine, because it would be implying that her man'chi is defective or she's still a kid or something.

_The paper that had gotten him on the track to the paidhi’s office was a respectable work: an analysist of set-plurals in the Ragi atevi dialect, of which he was proud…”_

Meh, ok. By Visitor it was something about food preservation but it's not really important.

The War of the Landing happened 21 years after humans first started landing.

_From time to time – it was worth a grin, even in the dark- Tabini would come to the paidhi and say, Transmit this. And he would phone Mospheira with a segment of code that, transmitted to the station, would be complete nonsense to the computers, so the technicians assured him – they just dropped it into some Remark string and transmitted it solely for the benefit of the eavesdroppers… Numbers would then turn up in the transmission sequences that burst some doomsayer’s bubble before he could go public with his theory._

Because Tabini is a magnificent bastard, and I feel like this proves something about the relationship between him and Bren that already exists. Bren doesn’t even question that something big might have happened that no one is telling him about. Not Mospheira – they waited too long to tell him, probably figuring they’d be notifying the atevi as well (which is true) and now Bren is the only one who doesn’t know.

Deanna and the succession. This all got retconned; not that it ever would make sense for there to be only two qualified people at one time – a pool of candidates makes more sense. BUT, personally I’ve decided that with the ret-con it makes more sense if Tabini pushed to get Bren, and Deanna’s supporters were so pissed off that her father’s people got her pushed into the official alternate spot.

No birds on this planet. Lots of lizard-type things we assume, that do lay eggs. The proveb about 'goseniin and golden eggs'. Birds and lizards, as we know, have common ancestors on earth though so, sure, although at some point later feather pillows or mattresses are mentioned, and I’d personally like to know where they hell they’re getting feathers.

Chapter 3 –

Toby runs a medical office on the North Shore, apparently. Hell if I know if this is still canon.

Breakfast with Tabini. GOD look I know I have a thing for high-fantasy court protocol but this is just painful compared to the later books.

_“My grandmother is in residence. You’ve not encountered her, personally, have you? I don’t recall you’ve had that adventure.” - “She does enjoy an argument. But she’s quite retiring now. She says she’s dying.” “She’s said so for five years,” Banichi muttered. “Aiji-ma.”_

“She does enjoy an argument” much in the same way that a fish enjoys swimming. I always took this as a timeline, in that Ilisidi left Shejidan for Malguri once Tabini was elected, and so it’s been five years since then. Making Bren and Tabini both 27-28. This also works with the ret-con as laid out in the short story “Deliberations.” I always was amused at her public reaction being, “Well fine, don’t elect me, I’m dying anyway.”

_“I hold you as a major asset to my administration,” Tabini said. “Please believe that what I do is out of that estimation, even this exile.”_

_Tabini rose and reached out his hand, not an atevi custom. Tabini had done it the first time ever they met, and at rare moments since._

I know *I* ship Tabini with Bren but do you think the court in Shejidan has such rumors?

 

_To the aiji-dowager’s prison, where she was dying- this notorious, bitter woman, twice passed over for aiji, whether the rumors about her were true… that, having offended Tabini, she had very little choice left._

I do love the idea that Tabini and Ilisidi make sure that absolutely no one knows how well they get along, possibly even Banichi.

_She favors Tabini,” Banichi said. “Contrary to reports. She has always favored him.”_

Ok, so maybe Banichi does know. I take it back.

_She’d fallen, riding in the hunt, at seventy-two. Broke her shoulder, broke her arm and four ribs, got up and rode through the rest of the course, until they’d caught the quarry. Then she’d attacked the course manager with her riding crop, for the lost hide on her precious, high-bred Matiawa jumper – as the story went._

I love this story and it may or may not be canon anymore, or it may never have been true, just a rumor that got passed around the court. Possibly started by Ilisidi herself, and false as hell but I don’t care. I suppose Bren either heard it from Tabini personally or from gossip around the Bu-javid, maybe his two chatty servants. Relevant in that Bren won’t admit to knowing Ilisidi’s age in later books, nor do we know the average lifespan of an ateva, which is probably wise of the author not to box herself in for later books.

Ok, so they get up the mountain to Malguri, Bren arguing about trains and busses and cars and other stupid things.

_Banichi seized him by the shoulder again and made further introductions, this time to two servants, both male, introductions which required another round of bows._

There is *so much* touching in this book. Either Banichi is treating Bren as a prisoner or no one bothered to warn the Guild that for humans touching promotes pack-bonding. You’re going to wind up with a pet human, ‘Nichi-ji, and it will serve you right.

Djinana and Maigi are reintroduced in “Deliverer” as still being on staff – Guild of course. Do you think (retcons aside,) that Ilisidi was amused to put almost all of her young men in servants’ clothes for the week Bren was there?

Chapter 4 –

_His predecessor twice removed had tried to arrange to let humans tour the outlying towns. Several mayors had backed the idea. One had died for it._

I missed this line the last few reads. Interesting.

OHMYGOD the clothes, the clothes are all wrong, I’m going to scream. Ok, Bren is fed up with being stuck in his fancy room and goes to explore the castle. And finds Ilisidi.

_Her finger indicated the spot in front of her chair, and he moved there and stood while she looked him up and down, with pale yellow eyes that had to be a family trait. They made the recipient of that stare think of everything he’d done in the last thirty hours._

I feel like Tabini’s pale eyes were always mentioned in reference to his father and I’m pretty sure this is the only time it’s mentioned that Ilisidi has eyes the same color. Interesting. Good job ‘Sidi-ji, you just meet your grandson’s associate and you’re already grilling him about his sex life. How many of those badly-written novels have YOU had in your hands, hm?

The poisoning scene is so jumbled I really wish I could read it from Banichi’s perspective.

 

Chapter 5 –

_But what if – a poisoned, delirious brain could form very strange ideas- what if Tabini’s sending him here hadn’t been to send HIM here, but to get Banichi and Jago inside Malguri, past Ilisidi’s guard?_

Honestly Bren that’s the smartest thought you’ve probably had since you fired the gun.

_Banichi arrived on a peal of thunder, walked in and stood by the fire._

Is it so wrong of me to want a movie?

_He remembered he’d chosen this, knowing there wouldn’t be a reward. He’d been twenty-two, and what he’d not known had so vastly outweighed what he’d known._

Ok, twenty two is close enough for canon. I feel like hen chose long before that, knew he wanted the job years before that.

 

_A betraying word choice. He was slipping, badly. The headache had upset his stomach, which was still uncertain._

New game: every time Bren’s stomach is upset, take a drink. You'll be unconscious before you finish the first trilogy.

 

_Atevi eyes reflected a pale gold. Atevi found it spooky that human eyes didn't, that humans could slip quietly through the dark. Their differences touched each_

_others' nightmares._

_"I'm supposed to be at breakfast with Tabini's grandmother," he said. "Banichi's mad at me."_

_"Why did you accept?"_  
  
_"I didn't know I could refuse. I didn't know what trouble it would make-"_  
  
_Jago made a soft, derisive sound. "Banichi said it was because you thought he was a dessert."_  
  
_"I tried to express that would do favorable things on his behalf because he seems to me a favorable person."_  
  
_"Midei," Jago declared in seeming surprise. It was a word he'd not heard before, and there weren't many, in ordinary usage, that he hadn't. "Dahemidei. You're midedeni."_  
  
_That was three in a row. He was too tired to take notes and the damned computer was down. "What does that mean?"_  
  
_"Midedeni believe luck and favor reside i people. It was a heresy, of course."_  
  
_Of course it was._

This is literally never brought up again.

 

_"But I doubt there’d be one [a book] here. Malguri’s library is mostly local history. The midedeni were all eastern.”_

YOU’RE IN THE BLOODY EAST!!! (*pinches bridge of nose, muttering* 'retcon, retcon, retcon')

 _“We share a man’chi,” Jago said, as if she had understood something he was saying. "To Tabini's house. Don't doubt us, paidhi-ji. We won't desert you."_  
I feel like Jago is more convinced of Bren's loyalty to Tabini than Banichi is at this point.

_"Tano shot at shadows," she translated, glancing at him. "It's all right. He's not licensed."_

?????

_The paidhi couldn’t start, at twenty-six atevi years of age, to humanize the people he dealt with._

26\. I will note that at absolutely no point in the series do we decide how long an atevi year is. How many days in a month, how many months in a year, how many hours in a day. One presumes that 12 being an infelicitous number there would not be 12 months in a year. But an Earth-like planet with axial tilt is going to produce four seasons, which leads to its own issues of fortunate numbers.

_It was the worst trap. All his predecessors had battled it. He knew it in theory. He’d been doing all right while he was an hour’s flight away from Mospheira. While his mail arrived on schedule, twice a week._

_The paidhi couldn’t get the emotional satisfaction out of Banichi and Jago that Tabini had been feeding him, laughing with him, joking with him, down to the last time they’d met._

_How good was Tabini, more to the point? How good at reading the paidhi was the atevi_ [sic] _fourth in line of his side of the bargain?_

Pretty damn good. Tabini is awesome. The atevi/ateva slip is constant, throughout the whole series. I would edit this series for free for this kind of error, if anyone gave me half the chance.

_Tipped off perhaps by his predecessor, that the paidhiin had a soft spot for personal attachments? That the longer you knew them, the greater fools they became and the more trusting, and the easier to get things from?_

See but Ilisidi didn’t seem to know, and in all the ret-cons Tabini still sent Bren to Ilisidi to lure her out of retirement or whatever so I put all my money on Tabini.

_He’d met Tabini on his few fill-ins for Wilson’s absences, a few days at a time, the two last years of Valasi’s administration –_

**Ok so here’s our first MAJOR canon divergence point. In this book not only had Bren been to the mainland before as a fill-in for Wilson, but he had met Valasi who ruled until his assassination, at which point Tabini was elected. In the ret-con Tabini is 12 or so when Valasi dies, Ilisidi takes over as regent until her grandson’s 23rd birthday at which point he makes a bid for the aijiinate and is elected.**

**(Edit:  I re-read the short story "Deliberations," and it puts Tabini at 14 or 15 when Valasi was assassinated, and in that version of events Ilisidi took care of him from a very young age, and he grew up basically at Malguri.)**

_Like Wilson- a man seventy years old, who'd just seen Valasi assassinated, who'd just come home, because his career ended with Valasi- with nothing to show for forty-three years of work but the dictionary entries he'd made, a handful of scholarly articles, and a record number of vetoes on the Transmontane Highway Project. No wife, no family, Nothing but the university teaching post waiting for him, and he couldn't communicate with the students."_

Wilson was in office for 43 years in this version. Which seems unlikely, but I don’t know. It would mean he served both Valasi and Ilisidi's husband. Maybe Shishogi hated Wilson so much he decided to take over the world. Also this would make Wilson in his late 80's as of Convergence, so I suppose that's possible. Does no one in Linguistics ever retire?

Chapter 6- 

Ilisidi tells Bren about wi'itkitiin and takes him riding. Oh, wi'itkitiin apparently do have feathers, that's good.

Just from the standpoint of character development, I think I honestly learned everything I needed to know about Ilisidi that she rides like a demon at god knows what age, on the herd leader whose name is “lethal” and that she babytalks him and feeds him treats by hand.

Bren learns about how mecheiti work as a pack. There's more verbal fencing with Cenedi and Ilisidi, again with everyone reading context into everything he says and Bren just wondering what the hell is going on. I always picture Cenedi and Ilisidi delivering the lines from the old Doctor Who episode, “My dear, I don’t think he’s quite a stupid as he seems.” “My dear, no one could be as stupid as _he_ seems.”

_The tea service had certainly been calculated to send some message; and he wasn't wholly certain Ilisidi was innocent in the matter of the tea-although he would bet the severity of his reaction had left the dowager and Cenedi some little chagrined; a general atevi recklessness toward questions of life and death and 'bihawa,' that aggressive impulse to test strangers, had betrayed them and left them somewhat at disadvantage._

I identify with Bren, TBH, because I also want to believe the best of people and because of this occasionally make a complete idiot of myself by being very oblivious.

Chapter 7-

It is mid-summer. Bren passes out ribbons and cards to the tourists and we get to see him be all charming and diplomatic.

_"Death rays," Tabini would say, and laugh, invite him to supper and a private drink of the vice humans and atevi held in common. Laugh, Tabini would say. Bren, there are fools on Mospheira and fools in the Bu-javid. Don't take them seriously._

_Steady hand, Bren-ji, like pointing the finger, there's no difference._

_Good shot, good shot, Bren..._

Bren muses some more on how much he's being and/or been played by Tabini.

_“I didn’t contest with the best my people have for fifteen years to come here to lie to you.”_

What, since you were ELEVEN??

_The first night he had been here that it hadn’t been raining the first hour of full dark, and the sky above the lake and the mountains to the east were so clear and black and cold one could see Maudette aloft, faintly red…”_

He’d been able on clear nights on Mt. Allan Thomas, to see the station,

I'm constantly confused about Mt Allan Thomas vs Mt Adam Thomas - They either change the name or there are two similarly named mountains on Mospheira, which since it seems to be a volcanic island chain ala Hawaii or Japan is… possible? But ??

_Lights flashed on all about him. An alarm began to ring as he blinked in the glare of electric light, and slammed the window shut and latched it, heart beating in utter startlement, with the sound of bare feet crossing the wooden floor of the next room._

_Tano showed up, stark naked, gun in hand, Djinana close behind him, and Maigi after that, Maigi dripping wet and wrapped in a towel with the thump of people running out in the halls, everywhere in Malguri, the alarm still sounding._

Service in Nand’ Bren’s household I’m afraid, nadiin. Does Bren not twig at this point that they are ALL Guild? Also, there are seven commas in that sentence and that’s probably why the fanfic is so personally delightful for me to write because I, too, write sentences like that with six or seven commas when given half a chance.

Chapter 8-

Riding with Ilisidi again.

_(he) thought that if he pulled up and lagged behind as long as he could hold Nokhada’s instincts in check, the dowager might take that for a surrender and slow down, but DAMNED if he would damned if he would cry help or halt. Atevi called it ‘na’itada.’ Barb called it being a damned fool._

You are a damned fool, but it’s why you’re our salad, Bren.

_He’d never noticed it before; and he was marginally embarrassed- not polite to sweat, the word had passed discreetly from paidhi to paidhi. Overheated humans smelled different, and different was not good with atevi, in matters of personal hygiene._

I only just recently learned that the reason dogs smell like corn chips is that it’s the bacteria on their skin and hair that gets trapped in their sweat that’s different from the bacteria found on humans. So humans’ sweaty feet smell like feet, and my dog's sweaty feet smell like corn chips. This seems a reasonable matter of science. But one does wonder exactly what humans smell like to atevi. There’s no reason we’d smell like any kind of animal that lives on their planet, bacteria being completely different and all. Bren's probably afraid to ask, considering all the other things he's too afraid to ask.

_“Said and did aren’t even brothers,” Jago said._

I like the contrast. Bren is all words. Words are meaningless to Guild, no indicator of man’chi. No one is convinced of Bren except by his actions.

_if we’d thrown air travel into Shejidan immediately, it might have provoked disturbances among the outlying associations. Not everyone believed Barjida-aiji would share the technology._

The aiji who signed the treaty was Barjida. His name shows up again in Inheritor but I was never sure. We’ll strike him from the list of “people who never got a name for some reason.”

Bren does the television interview.

_Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the com to her belt and headed for the door._

”What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”

She crossed back to him in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji”

_After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard._

This is the point at which she and Banichi are ... what basically ordered away and told not to interfere?

Bren muses on this history of humans coming to the planet.

_Fifty years and two Paidhiin ago, Mospheira had taken a collective deep breath and thrown satellite communication and rocket science onto the table, with the fervent hope that by hooking it to advanced communications ‘biichi-ji’ and ‘kabiu’ together would keep some enterprising atevi entity from combining the explosive with the propellant technology and blowing their rivals to hell._

That would put it before Wilson’s entry as paidhi, which I’m not sure if I buy because later on it’s Wilson that brought in airliners and television, but very hard to say at this point.

_I will not betray you, Bren-ji. What in hell did that mean, before Jago lit out the door and down the hall at the next thing to a dead run?”_

Well, considering that you point out that there are fourteen words for betrayal in Ragi, perhaps Mr-Language-Expert, you should tell us WHICH OF THE FOURTEEN WORDS SHE USED IN THAT SENTENCE, because she damned sure didn’t say it in Mosphei’ it would clarify things a hell of a lot, which means SOMEONE forgot their own shtick. *annoyed glance at author*

Chapter 9-

Cenedi sends Bren a message, Bren goes to meet him. Perhaps unwisely, but we gather it would have made little difference in the end, it was going to happen regardless of if he went willingly or not. They have tea and verbally fence for a while.

Tabini’s letter:

_I send you a man, ‘Sidi-ji, for your disposition. I have filed Intent on his behalf, for his protection from faceless agencies, not, I think, faceless to you, but I make no complain against you regarding a course of action which under extraordinary circumstances you personally may have considered necessary. Therefor I relieve you of that unpleasant and dangerous necessity, ‘Sidi-ji, my favorite enemy, knowing that others may have acted against me invidiously, or for personal gain, but that you, alone, have consistently taken a stand of principle and policy against the Treaty. Neither I nor my agents will oppose your inquiries or your disposition of the paidhi-aiji at this most dangerous juncture. I require only that you inform me of your considered conclusions, and we will discuss solutions and choices. My agents have instructions to remain but not to interfere._

Cenedi questions Bren some more. It’s confirmed that Tabini took the aijiinate 5 years ago. There are supposedly 4 million people on Mospheira. This seemed excessive to me, and I don’t know if that’s been changed, but the island of Hokkaido – the 2nd largest Japanese island— has a population of over 5 million, so it's at least not impossible.

Chapter 10-

They tie Bren up in the basement.

_They had told him at the very outset of his training that if the situation ever really blew up like this, suicide was a job requirement. They didn’t want a human in atevi hands spilling technological information ad lib and indefinitely—a very serious worry early on, when atevi hadn’t reached the political stability they had had for a century, and when rivalry between associations had been a constant threat to the Treaty… oh no, it couldn’t happen, not in the remotest imagination. But they still taught the course—he knew a dozen painless methods— and they still said, if there was no other option, take it—because there was no rescue coming and no way anyone would risk the peace to bring him out._

I find it really hard to believe that Bren knows “a dozen” painless ways of committing suicide, James Bond he ain’t, but whatever.

Bren gets past fear to anger and mouths off to the guards, which is always my favorite thing

_Past a certain point, to hell with the game. He shut his eyes and thought about the snow and the sky around the winter slopes. About the wind, and nobody else in sight. Told him something, that did, that it wasn’t Barb his mind went to. If it mattered. It was, however, a curious, painful discovery._

They take him out of the cellar and up to Ilisidi’s balcony.

_”Good morning,” she said, “nand’paidhi. Sit. What lovely hair you have. Does it curl on its own?”_

_”It’s the hour for ghosts,” Ilisidi said. “Do you believe in them?”_

_He caught a quick, cold breath—caught up the pieces of his sanity… and engaged._

_“I believe in unrewarded duty, nand’dowager. I believe in treachery, and invitations one shouldn’t take at face value—“_

Don't back down. Don't show fear.

_”Do you mind telling me,” he asked her, above the wind, “what you’re after? Launch sites on Mospheira is a piece of nonsense. Wrong latitude. Ships leaving for other places is the same. So, is arresting me just politics or what?”_

_”My eyes aren’t what they were. When I was your age, I could see your orbiting station. Can you, from here?”_

I do want to say that my first reading of this book the big reveal here did an amazing job. By the time we’d gotten through everything else, I had completely forgotten about the ship, just as Bren had. I feel like I should cut the author slack on everything else because that was originally just supposed to be the plot of the book and then the characters and setting ganged up on her. I sympathize.

Chapter 11

_It was the truth, all of it, all justified he knew that the way he’d know the unspoken truth of his dealings with atevi- that the paidhiin were doing the best they could do in a bad bargain, keeping a peace that wasn’t viable between ordinary people of their two species, saving what they’d almost entirely destroyed…_

_“Baji-naji, nand’paidhi. Fortune has a human face and bastard Chance whores drunken down your streets.”_

A delightful line. I bet she practiced that one.

_”In reasonable fear of harm,” Ilisidi said finally, “you would not give us a simple statement against my grandson. In pain, you refused to give it. What good is man’chi to a human?”_

What good IS man’chi to a human?

_He’d believed Cenedi. He’d believed the game in the cellar, when they’d put the gun to his head – they’d made him think he was going to die, and in such a moment, dammit, he’d have thought he'd think of Barb, he’d have thought he’d think of his mother or Toby or someone human but he hadn’t… Being alone was all he could imagine.”_

Chapter 12-

They ride out of Malguri, at a dangerous pace. Bren has a breakdown. Or maybe a breakthrough, no one is sure, least of all Bren. He realizes his love of skiing is an attraction to the idea of his own accidental death, a subconscious desire for suicide that’s not really his fault. Someone lies better than he thinks about certain things or the psych requirements for the Foreign Office aren't very stringent. Or they want paidhiin with a death wish.

_What sent him down the mountain wasn’t, then, the delirious freedom he told himself it was, it was what he’d just experienced: a spiteful, irrational death wish, aiming his own destruction at everyone and everything he served— that was what he was courting._

So, I have theories about this kind of breakdown and man’chi, related to Veijico and Lucasi later, and Irene after that. I suspect Ilisidi does this kind of thing on the regular and finds putting her opponent through hell to the breaking point opens them up to attaching to her. It probably works pretty well for atevi. It seems to work pretty well on humans, too, least slightly-crazy ones.

Chapter 13-

Jago comes running up, the rendezvous at the Spires has been ambushed, Banichi is injured and left behind. The essential scene: the one thing that’s never changed throughout all the canon, and thus we assume one of the scenes that the author had in mind when she first started writing the damn book, (we all have a few of those.)

_“Tell me where he thinks he’s going- when the shooting starts, a man takes his REAL direction- or do they say that in Shejidan?”_

It probably rhymes in Ragi.

Bren goes after Banichi. Painful and confusing on my first read, after this difficult re-read I actually enjoyed it because it was about time Bren confused his atevi associates as much as they confuse him. Turnout being fair play. Extra good the way it’s written because he had literally JUST withstood the trial Ilisidi had put him and convinced everyone of his man’chi to Tabini. Then he goes and does something human. Not that all humans would do this. At Bren’s point in the series, god knows I wouldn’t, but Mr adrenaline junkie-I have-serious-attachment-issues. Well, it’s believable.

_“I don’t know what I’ve done since the dowager’s apartment, that you look at me like that.”_

_Picturing himself again on the mountain along, seeing only the snow._

_Nobody had objected to Jago hitting him…and maybe everybody else knew why Jago had done it._

_I’ll never betray you, nadi Bren._

Fourteen words for betrayal and again Bren does not bother to mention which one Jago used in that sentence, which seems like it would be RELEVANT TO HIS UNDERSTANDING, maybe Bren’s not as fluent as he thinks. Yes, this is one of my biggest complaints about this book.

Chapter 14-

Short chapter, transitional sort of bit.

_In the cellar, they’d recorded his answers to their questions—they said it was all machimi, all play-acting, no validity._

_But that tape still existing, if Ilisidi hadn’t destroyed it. She’d not have left it behind in Malguri, for the people that were supposedly her jilted allies._

Chapter 15-

They get to Wigairiin and are attacked. Bren sensibly hides.

_Man’chi. Didn’t mean duty. That was the translation on the books. The drive that held the company together. They said Ilisidi hadn’t any. That aijiin didn’t. Cosmic loneliness. Absolute Freedom. Babs. Ilisidi. Tabini._

“Aijiin have no man’chi” is the name of my filk metal band, btw.

_Atevi didn’t cry. One more cosmic indignity nature spared the atevi._

This has, as far as I know, not been contradicted in any later books, but I am going to double check before I include it in any of my fanfic, also not sure how that works biologically, but I suppose it's established enough that atevi eyes are different enough from human eyes that I won't try to dispute it.

_But, overall, decent folk, like the old couple with the grand-kids, impulses that didn’t add up to love, but they felt something profound that humans couldn’t feel, either. Something maybe he’d come closer to than any paidhi before him had come-_

The rebels have Ilisidi and Cenedi.

_They had a gun to Ilisidi’s head, then, and told him to stop. “Where’s the paidhi?” they kept asking, and hauled Cenedi up by the collar. “We’ll shoot her,” they said._

_But Cenedi didn’t know. Couldn’t betray him, even to save Ilisidi, because Cenedi didn’t know._

Yeah that’s it baby, hit all my narrative kinks. Ilisidi with a gun to her head, Cenedi powerless, and our Bren wins Cenedi over the only way he can, by saving her life - for human reasons.

The rebels have him and his computer and want access.

_"Access code! red-and-blue yelled into his face._

_Oh, God, he didn’t like this part of the plan._

_“Fuck off,” he said._

They taught you how to say “fuck off” in Ragi at the University, did they? The only time in the series Bren tells someone to fuck off in so many words. I could stand more of that honestly.

Banichi shows up and single-handedly beats half the rebels to death with a metal pipe. No biggie.

Chapter 16-

_‘Seeing Barb’ was an excuse to keep his family at arms’ length. ‘Seeing Barb’ was the lie he told his mother when he just wanted to get up on to the mountain where his family wasn’t, and Barb wasn’t. He’d known, once, what to feel around human beings. Only lately- he just wanted the mountain and the wind and the snow._

More relevance to Bren’s psych profile.

_“Cenedi calls you immensely brave. And very stupid.”_

THAT’S IT KIDS, THAT’S THE SERIES.

_"Sometimes I think I've failed. I don't even know. I'm supposed to understand you. And most of the time I don't know, nadi Jago. Is that failure?"_

_Jago blinked, that was all for a moment. Then:_

_"No."_

_"I can't make you understand me. How can I make others?"_

_“But I do understand, nadi Bren.”_

_“WHAT do you understand?”_

_“That there is great good will in you, nadi Bren.”_

That, at the very least.

_“Five administrations have kept the peace, under the aijiin of Shejidan and the dictates of the paidhiin…”_

_“We don’t dictate.”_

_“The iron-fisted suggestions of the paidhiin.”_

This is why Banichi is our salad.

Considering how much touching Jago is doing in this chapter, I shouldn’t be surprised she makes a pass at him in the next book.

_"Much nicer if my call to Phoenix goes out through the dish on Adams. But the intersat dish on Mogari-nai is the aiji's alternative and aI think he'll use it, directly. Atevi would deal without me in the loop. If the wanted to. Do you understand? Tabnii's government is under pressure. That's the disturbance in Maidingi Province. That's where I've been. Tabini has to make a response to this ship. He'll offer Mospheira a chance for input in that response. United front, FO. I think I can get that arrangement."_

_"Tell Tabini," he said, "prime the dish on Mogari-nai to talk to that ship up there, tonight. I think we'll get the one on Allan Thomas..."_

I'm sorry what's the name of the damned mountain?

_The aiji dowager said something rude about young men falling at her feet, and go sit down, SHE was in command of the plane._

I aspire to be her some day

Phew, first book over. It's a very hard re-read, once you're used to all the stuff that's been settled in the later books. With any luck I'll work my way through two and three soon. I've started both but I enjoy them as reading material so much it's hard to stop and sit down to write. 


	2. Invader - Book 2

 

Chapter 1 – 

 

_He skied, aggressively, when he got the chance; in his twenty-seven years he’d spent two sessions on crutches._

He’s 27 now. Had a birthday sometime in the last 10-14 days? Won’t forget that one anytime soon. Let’s assume it’s not author adjustment, and Bren’s birthday is in mid-to-late-summer, just for funsies.

 

_It had also been a hundred and seventy-eight years of stranded, ground-bound humans on Mospheira making their own decisions and arranging their own accommodations with the earth of the atevi._

That's 178 since the war of the Landing ended, not since the actual first humans landed, this bears out pretty well, getting rounded up to 200 years very nicely since about 12 years go by between now and where we are by book 17 or so. 

 

_And if the established atevi authority went down after nearly two hundred years of building an industrial complex and an interlinked power structure uniting hundreds of small atevi associations… it would be his personal fault._

No pressure or anything!

 

_My god, Damiri had declared herself._

Until now, Tabini and Damiri had not made their association public but Bren immediately knew who Banichi meant. Tabini had already confided in Bren.

 

_Maybe he’d personally offended the woman- not hard, considering Deana’s temper._

_It wasn’t a friendship. He and Hanks had never liked each other, not in university, not in the Foreign Office, not in the halls of the Department. Their candidacies for the office had had different political supporters. He’d won; he’d become Wilson-paidhi’s designated successor…she’d had the political patronage in the executive of the Department, but he’d had her on technicalities and nuances of the language in ways the selection process couldn’t ignore, no matter Hanks’ friends in high places._

Still on book 2, so obviously again – most of this doesn’t hold up in later books. What I picture as fitting in with the later canon is that after Tabini turned down two or more experience candidates and said he wanted someone younger, Deana’s gang tried to get her put in, but Bren’s superior scores and his fluency and his paper on set plurals or food preservation or whatever the hell his dissertation was on in this universe got him on top of Tabini’s list, along with his being Tabini’s age, and Hanks’ people couldn’t do anything against the aiji’s choices, obviously and since he’d already turned down multiple candidates they were SOL.

Chapter 2 – 

_Saidin was middle-aged, slender—her coat was beige brocade, her slippers matching in the latest fashion; her braid was a simple affair, incorporating pink and green ribbons in the heraldic style of centuries of service to aristocracy. She was of that class of servants, clearly, born, not hired, to the lifelong duty of a particular house to which she was possibly, though unofficially, related._

None of this makes a great deal of sense to me, based on Saidin being Guild and possibly with man’chi to Ilisidi, but the author is forgiven for this being Book Two, and Bren is forgiven for being exhausted, on drugs, and naïve as hell.  Pink and green (and white) are mostly kept as Atigeini colors which is sensible if you’re thinking of lilies.

Chapter 3-

_Tabini’s apartment, literally next door and center-most of the seven historic residences on this floor-_

By the end of the series it’s four apartments on the third floor, and Ilisidi’s is one of them. Can’t imagine where they put three whole apartments in the renovation.

_a young paidhi and an equally young aiji, both suddenly appointed to office with the demise of Tabini’s father and the abrupt resignation of Wilson-paidhi—in private, where no politics intervened, he and Tabini laughed and held discussions far more easily than certain powers on either side of the strait might like to think._

In this version, Tabini assumed the aijinate directly from his father, later on he was a minor when Valasi died and Ilisidi acted as regent for him for a least a little while.

_Both single men in high stress jobs—but he had Barb and Tabini had Damiri for refuge, and they compared notes._

I want to read that fic.

_“She’s very curious about you,”_

Because you talk about him all the time probably, my dude.

_“If it was to make dissent in the paidhi’s office evident, I fear she succeeded.”_

_“One fears so, yes. Bren-ji, I’d gladly have taken her to the airport under guard; I’d gladly set her adrift in a row-boat, if I didn’t feel such a dismissal would not better relationship with Mospheira.”_

What did she say to Tabini that pissed him off so much; or did Tabini already have a bias against her because of Bren’s problems in the past with her? Or is it just that Hanks clearly wants the job and Tabini is like, ‘lol, no.  I know where Bren is, and the job’s still his’.

_“Shall I empower this interloper? I dealt with this woman once, and only once, when I told her to tell Mospheira send you back immediately or I would have her shot. By the result, I believe she transmitted my message faithfully.”_

Seriously, Hanks, wtf did you do?

_“They needed to select a fool?”_

_“There are very, very few humans who speak the language, only three who can think in it.”_

_“There are two. You and Wilson-paidhi. This woman does not think.”_

And we know what Ilisidi and Tabini both thought about Wilson. That’s how badly Hanks managed to offend Tabini in less than a week. Without even a meeting with him?  I WONDER IF SHE INSULTED BREN, HIS BEST HUMAN EVER. Also, confirmation that the ‘not supposed to speak the language’ thing IS a retcon and didn’t used to be that way.

_And he did from time to time take chances on Tabini, monumental chances, once he’d felt out the ground underfoot—_

Relevant to my fic interests.

_Tabini was at least canny enough in the difference between atevi and human to know that, gut level, he might think he understood—but chances were very good that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, and never would unaided by the paidhi, come up with the right forecast of human behavior, because he didn’t come with the right hardwiring._

(Six commas and an em-dash.)

Tabini, I think though, comes closer than anyone else, except maybe Banichi and Jago. And as later books mention, he’s well aware that Bren may be a statistical outlier adn should not be counted. I think at times he may even believe that Bren is some rogue human who does feel man’chi, but he intellectually knows it’s not true and that’s one of the things he values most about his association with Bren, because it means that while everyone else in the world follows Tabini because biology compels them, Bren is with him because he wants to be, and that means something special to Tabini. I just have a lot of feels about these two you guys.

Chapter 4 –

Listening to the tape with the legislature.

_Which made it necessary to keep every reaction off this face, while men and women of the Western Association themselves minimally expressive and capable of reading the little expression which high-ranking atevi did show in public were watching his every twitch, shift of position and blink._

I love this recurring theme that Bren tries to be impassive all the time and succeeds too well with humans, but fails with atevi, who read him like an open book. He’s too atevi for humans and too human for atevi, which is pretty much the theme of the series I suppose, but I like it.

_“Sorry I missed your phone call. Bren, I know it’s probably not the time to tell you, but there’s no good tie and this mustn’t go on longer. I’ve married Paul. Forgive me. I wish I could build a life on your visits, but I can’t – Barb.”_

_So he rolled up the scroll. The steadiness of his own hands amazed him. He trusted his expression was calm._

_“Is there a problem, nadi Bren?”_

_He hadn’t managed it, then. Jago saw through it._

Case in point. I include this bit because at some point later on Bren tries to say that he was the one who broke off the relationship with Barb and I’m like ???

_God knew he was civilized. He took his losses with entirely professional perspective._

_You could get used to pain. Part of the job, wasn’t it? He seemed to have made himself a hero to the atevi around him. THEY appreciated him in their way, which hadn’t anything to do with the sense of human companionship he had from Barb; but it wasn’t a bad thing, if you couldn’t’ have other things, to be appreciated by the people you most associated with._

_You couldn’t say love, you couldn’t say friendship, you couldn’t say all sorts of things that resonated off human nerves and satisfied human feelings._

_A human wanted a familiar tag to call things, and Banichi was a lot of things that humans the other side of the strait would be scared to death to share a room with. So was Jago. And when they’d risked their lives to save yours, you could love them so much—if you didn’t need to be loved back._

_Hell, maybe human caring was a survival disadvantage. Who knew? It sure screwed up lives._

How many people on Mospheira were ignoring the fact that the paidhi had this opinion that human attachments screwed up your life? Or is it actually a prerequisite for the job?

Chapter 5-

After failing to sleep, Bren tries to work, lots of going through his computer and complaining mentally about Mospheiran government. Some canon in here about dictionaries being restricted on both sides of the strait and that he has trouble even getting a standard commercial Ragi-only dictionary in Shejidan, though he has his own that he’s put together. Can you just picture Tabini letting Bren know he's granting him an estate and a lordship and Bren being like, "Um, does that mean I can have books now?"

_What was the state of affairs, the ship asked, between Mospheira and the world’s native population? Mospheira wasn’t answering that question. The State Department, the same closed-mouthed, upper-echelon that backed Deana Hanks was advising the President on an entity it didn’t know a damned thing about._

He considers trying to make peace with Deana.

_The rift was not a resolvable rift between two people, it was ideological between two political philosophies on Mospheira.  The camp he feared now had thrown Deana Hanks onto the mainland was the same that had supported Hanks through the selection process no matter her test scores, and he suspected foreknowledge of key questions she still hadn’t answered with as high a score as his, as well as outside help on the requisite paper. _

 

Chapter 6 -

_He was about to commit treason. Was that what it was called when it was your species, as well as your nation?_

_Then it was out into the hall of porcelain flowers and down to the general security lift, which all the residents of the top two levels used, down the three floors to the broadest, most televised corridor in the Bu-javid, the entrance to he tashrid. He was accustomed to the territory. His own office wasn't that far removed._

I'm still trying to figure out the layout of the Bu-javid.

He speaks to the legislature and explains the history of the ship and the divide in human politics. Random dude takes a shot at Bren. Jago is a better shot, obviously. 

The chief of Bu-javid security's name is Marin.

 

Chapter 7-

_A return of late summer warmth._

_And Bren couldn’t help but think of Banichi’s disapproval of the balcony in Lady Damiri’s apartment, which, if he looked directly up from the table, must be the balcony above this one._

In this book, Ilisidi’s apartment is a floor below where Tabini's is. By the last four or five books, her apartment is on the 3rd floor with Tabini’s and Bren’s. By Convergence there are only four apartments on the 3rd floor – Tabini’s, Bren’s, Tatiseigi’s and Ilisidi’s.

Bren and Ilisidi have breakfast, Jago fights him on going down to his office, insists he stay in the apartments. Everyone argues.

_The collective, the group to which he was always, biologically, external. He’d be inside at Malguri, briefly,   … the one glimpse of what he couldn’t have, couldn’t be. That was what llisidi and Cenedi had touched. Barb had fairly well finished the human attachment he had, but he couldn’t replace with Jago or Banichi._

Haha, keep telling yourself that.

_Barb had gotten the signals: youth, ending, the rest of her life starting at twenty-whatever- five?_

Barb is a year or two younger than Bren.

He gets a call from Shawn, he tries to call Deana, who refuses to take his call. Then we get to my favorite part of chapter 7, “Bren rants about ~~American~~  Mospheiran politics.”

Chapter 8 – 

_He wrote a note to Tabini that said, 'Aiji-ma, I am doing well today. Thank you for your kind intervention last night. I hope for your success in all undertakings." meaning grandmother hadn't served up the wrong tea, Tano hadn't broken his ribs last night..."_

He is so precious to think that Tabini is not getting near CONSTANT updates from literally everyone around him, I just can't handle it.

Bren has to enlist Damiri's staff to help with too much mail. Discussion about kabiu of foods and meat and in-season game, none of which has changed significantly throughout the series, so we’re good there.

_Departmental policy said don’t discuss human politics. Don’t discuss internal and unresolved debates. It wasn’t the paidhi’s business to steer atevi policy to oppose a Mospherian choice._

More musings about politics. I read this book for the first time during the US primaries in 2016 and, um, yeah. That was a trip.

_Mospheira had never understood atevi. Mospheira had never needed or wanted to understand atevi, just the paidhi did. That was why they appointed him. That was what they paid him to do, so they didn’t have to._

 

Chapter 9 –

Bren sends Tabini’s message to the island basically saying “play nice or we won’t sell you the materials you need to build your rocket.” 

Algini gets back with Bren’s luggage – Bren has a minor emotional crisis watching Tano greet his partner and Jago do the same when she gets back, verbally makes an idiot of himself. Later on in the series he manages to make do with “one is very glad you see you,” so we suppose he learns as time goes on, and his people have learned his strange ways.

_Tabini’s note had continued: ‘By suppertime the whole matter must be fait accompli by way of Bu-javid systesm or we will be awash in additional motions.’ Chimati sida’ta. The beast under dispute would already have been eaten._

_He had hoped, he had remotely hoped—and knew he was creating serious trouble not only for himself, but for everyone in the Department who backed him, in proceeding without authority. He regretted that as a personal, calculated and depressingly necessary betrayal._

_If They, meaning the senior officials in the State Department hanged the paidhi for it—at this point, chimati sida’ta, they had to catch him first._

A delightful saying which, again, is never used again.

Bren resolves that he’s basically the only one who can prevent the idiots in power on the island from screwing things up for the entire planet and he’s going to do it even if it means he can’t go home again.

 

Chapter 10-

Bren and Tabini talk to the ship. Tabini throws a curveball by telling Ramirez to send his own paidhi.

_“The issues are biological, not cultural, and all persons experienced in atevi-human contact will advise you these issues are not resolvable. Atevi are not hostile. They wish to communicate directly with the ship, for protection of their own interests.”_

Tabini throws a curveball by telling Ramirez to send his own paidhi.

_There were sinking instants in which he was SURE Tabini knew more Mosphei’ than Tabini ever admitted to._

_“Mospheira is a member state of the Western Association. The island is a province among other provinces. It does not speak for atevi or for this planet. It’s required to abide by the decisions of the Western Association regarding foreign policy and trade._

I do wonder how much the average Mospheiran understands this point of the treaty, that they are technically part of the aishidi’tat, not outside of it.

_In point of fact there are only three or so humans in the world fluent in the atevi language, there’re no atevi fluent in the human language._

Perhaps, but give it a few years. Only three? Him, Wilson and Deana – Kate and Ben show up in two books, 3 years on – is that enough time to have studied it up, or does Bren still not consider them fluent?

_It was an appalling grant of power. It meant—in atevi terms—he bore direct responsibility along with that grant of power._

_It was the moment, in a curious retreat of his mind, in which he really, definitively said good_ I _-bye forever to Barb. In which he thought of the letter he’d write to his mother, and Toby._

Banichi is back and escorts him upstairs; they bicker, Banichi makes jokes, Bren presses for info about what the Guild is up to.

_“Nand’paidhi,” Tano said, meanwhile, “Hanks-paidhi has called. Three times.”_

_Oh, God, he hadn’t countermanded the call and recall order. The operator had been ringing Hanks since the afternoon._

And serves her right, but at least Bren has the soul to feel like a jerk about it.

_Ilisidi’s message cylinder had come back gain. He opened that last. It said, “An old woman desires your company on any morning you feel inclined. You improve our circulation. And you have such pretty hair.”_

_He read it three times, with a lump in his throat and the illegitimate and fatal satisfaction of believing one living being in the universe enjoyed his company; one lord of the Association didn’t want to buy him, kill him, or use him—or wasn’t assigned by Tabini to protect him. Very opposite things were the possibility. But, dammit, at least he knew what and why._

Bren needs a dog or something, god.

Bren falls asleep watching his newly-installed television, he wakes when Banichi comes in to turn off the TV.  Banichi expresses surprise that Bren, having survived one breakfast with the aiji-dowager, tempts fate by accepting another one.

_“I like the old woman,” he said shortly to a silhouette against the doorway and knew the word didn’t mean ‘like’ in the humanly, emotional sense. “And there, of course, I have information I don’t get here.”_

_“Because you think the aiji-dowager is a salad, and you value information from those most interested in disinforming you?”_

_“Nadi, I think she’s a breath of fresh air. You’re a salad yourself, and I’m collecting everything I can find that tells me how to make humans in the sky not fly down tomorrow morning in satellites and loot the Bu-javid treasures—“_

Hanks is sending messages to certain messages of the tashrid, some of them “quite egregiously misphrased.”

_“she asked the lord of Korami province for a pregnant calendar.”_

_‘Pregnant calendar’ and ‘urgent meeting.’ He began to laugh and sanity gave way. He laughed until the tape hurt._

_“I take it that’s not code?”_

 

The Ragi language has so many phonic similarities that get tossed in from time to time, the puns must be magnificent. And I've been informed that there has never been a human linguist who didn't love puns. I have this head canon of Tabini and Banichi early on having a contest to try and get Bren to laugh to confirm humans have a sense of humor and throwing better and better puns at him until he snaps. (Also that's really the mark of having mastered a foreign language, when you can make and understand puns in it.)

 

Chapter 11-

Bren fights with Deana via phone. I love angry Bren.

_At times he shocked himself. Maybe it was atevi court manners that took over his mouth when he suffered whiteouts of temper—_

_Court manners with all the vitriol that attended._

“ _Barb Letterman’s married,” Hanks said. “Did you know?”_

_“How kind of you to let me know. Please bring me your seal. Or I’ll have your apartment and your person searched.”_

I need more of this Bren. I love angsty Bren, don’t get me wrong. But angry-asshole Bren is a whole other thing.

Tano says that he should not be obliged to distract himself with schoolchildren.

_“The paidhi finds in the schoolchildren the best reason for keeping this job,” he muttered without censoring, in the growing confidence that Tano bore no tales and Tabini would understand anyway. “Ask Banichi about salads.”_

_“There’s a vote in the Guild we must attend.”_

_“About assassinating the paidhi?”_

_“No, nand’paidhi, that’s already been voted down.” That didn’t even rate a blink._

Algini is senior Guild, sure, but I’m convinced Tano is just his ‘good with tech junior’ who was attached to the unit for experience and is charmed by Bren being his polite self.

_“It’s all quite instructive, paidhi-ji. I’ve learned who you contact, I’ve learned who are your associates and who are petulant and ill-disposed. I’ve learned that the paidhi considers the letters of ordinary citizens to be answered seriously. So when I voted in the Guild, I also spoke about that, nand’paidhi. I’m not supposed to tell you that, but I did.”_

Actual Cinnamon Roll Tano, who can also kill you. It’s probably a good Guild tactic when pretending to be regular staff: get assigned to read all the mail.

_“Does the Guild call in absent members—for all proposed contracts?_

_“When a contract involves matters so high as this, yes, it does, nan’paidhi: it goes to the total assembly of the Guild, as this had to, once members filed in opposition.”_

No idea if this is still true or if it has ever BEEN true, (since everyone lies to Bren a lot.)

_“You’ve received two proposals of marriage.”_

_“You’re joking.”_

_“one sent a picture. She’s not bad looking, nand’paidhi.”_

 

Lunch with Hanks.

_If the paidhi had modesty left, at this point, he’d forgotten where he’d put it. He suffered the tape-up at the hands of pleasant and no entirely objective women, he had his shower and thereafter abandoned himself to a pair of servants who though his hair a complete novelty and argued over the job of braiding it.”_

Headcanon that Damiri made a bet with Tabini if any of her staff would manage to get the paidhi into bed, and was mad when she lost the bet. 

 

_He walked into the dining room—which forced Hanks, already seated, to rise, in strict atevi etiquette. She sat which the servants couldn’t but remark…”_

Which, interestingly, with the information we get later in the series, where the highest ranking person enters the dining room and sits last. This means that Bren is putting himself in rank above her.  And Deana, having studied for the job, knows this, and isn’t happy about it at all.

_“I wanted actually,” he said, “to get a list of persons you’ve dealt with and what promises you think I should honor.”_

She claims all her politicking with the opposition was in an attempt to find Bren when he was missing, he accuses her of trying to be a hero. She throws it right back at him, rightfully so.

You know what else won points with me here?

_“Did you know Barbara was going to marry?” Hanks asked in Ragi._

_“No. It wasn’t one of those things we discussed.”_

Note what he doesn’t say here. What a lot of men would say here to save face; “she was just someone I slept with; she wasn’t that important to me.”  But Bren doesn’t say it even to save face and put off Hanks.  Although perhaps Deana knew them both in University, and since Bren asks Barb to call Deana’s father later on in Chapter whatever, that might be the case. Or maybe she isn't even caring about hurting him so much as she wants to see if she can get him to visibly react. 

_“You know your face doesn’t react? Even when you’re on Mospheira, you’re absolutely deadpan.”  
_

_“You lose the habit.”_

_“You’re slipping, you know it? Going right over the edge. What happened to you in Malguri? What happened to the arm?”_

_“It broke.”_

_“Who broke it?”_

_“A gentleman who didn’t like my origins. That’s always a danger.”_

_“You’d rather be atevi, hadn’t you?”_

It took you all this time to figure that out, Hanks? I mean, OBVIOUSLY he would.

This last is all in Ragi, presumably. Also, as we find out in the next chapter, the pin Saidin gives him is a listening device. I am 99% sure that Tabini and Damiri are having lunch and listening to this entire conversation, with whoever in Tabini’s guard that knows the most Mosphei’ filling in the bits Tabini himself can’t pick up. It’s super fun to re-read this chapter while imagining those two sitting and listening to Bren fight with Deana in two languages.

 

Chapter 12-

 

Bren meets with the Space Committee, there’s debate with Geigi about the FTL issue, some bits about Determinism as a religious movement.  The forms of address are all over the place, he addresses Geigi as ‘nadi’ at one point, but that really doesn’t get settled down until at least book 7, Cherryh is clearly still experimenting with things at this point.

_You formed sets on the fly in your conversation just to avoid divisible plural forms, like the dual or quat not offset by the triad or monad, and in learning rapid conversation, even with the shortcut concepts the language held, your head hurt—until you got to a dgree of familiarity where you could chain calculate while holding a conversation, and no restaurant ever got away with padding your bill._

None of those dinner parties where, ‘there are seven people, two ordered appetizers and wine, four only ordered dinner, one ordered dinner and dessert, who owes how much?’ nonsense either.

_He’d slid out of higher math in desperation for ore study time, found later that he could sight-solve the problems in math she’d skipped if he though in Ragi and the university had given him six credits he’d never sat in class for._

Bren r smart.

_Atevi demanded perfection in their numbers. It was the demon in the works, that both kept atevi from sliding back into dark ages one they’d made an advance: and kept atevi from advancing as fast on a single front—because they had to adjust all their philosophy to accommodate new concepts._

The whole “humans as space orcs/Space MacGuyver” movement on tumblr is one of my favorite things so I can’t help think of the Vulcan Science Academy vs the humans of Starfleet and “Why do you need another warp core, what happened to the two warp cores we just gave you??”

_The same recklessness that had gotten Geigi into financial difficulty had evidently moved Geigi to that blunt, public question, and if there was an influence among the opposition to Tbbini that deserved preservation right along with Ilisidi, Geigi’s blunt willingness to confront the paidhi and demand a truth that might wreck him had the paidhi’s respect._

Geigi is a salad.

Banichi explains the pin is Tabini’s listening device. Bren says he needs to talk to astronomers or mathematicians. Banichi, it turns out, is unware the sun is a star.

_There wasn’t any atevi star-lore to speak of._

Atevi don’t make constellations, though I bet that the humans have after 200 years. The atevi planet is in a 'dirty system' however, with a lot of debris, which appears to affect the number of bright stars visible from the planet’s surface.

_“Astronomers?” Banichi gave him a frowning, considering look, and he suddenly remembered Banichi, all-competent Banichi was from the provinces.”_

From Talidi province, specific which is either in or attached to the Taisaigin Marid, which we learn in later books has very little public schooling, so it would make sense that Banichi never had that kind of science class. Assuming, of course, that his province of origin hasn’t been retconned.

_“-twenty-seven discreet and experienced staff, of clear man’chi to Tabini-aiji, and one managerial, a retired gentleman, one Dasibi, out of Magisiri, who would be greatly honored to be called back to Bu-javid service._

Dasibi is of Tano’s clan, therefore we assume that Tano is from Magisiri also, wherever the hell that is.

Bren tries to call his mother, can’t get through, calls Toby.

_The daughter came on. A high clear voice called, “Papa? It’s Uncle Bren,”_

Making the daughter absolutely no younger than 4, probably 5, by my experience of kids, if she’s capable of answering the phone like that. The kids’ ages throughout the series are confusing as hell.

Bren is mad enough to punch a wall.

_“Pizza,” the youngest servant blurted out.  “Is this not in correct season, nand’paidhi?”_

_“We hadn’t the red sauce,” cook said. We’re told it will come, but the plane was delayed by weather.”_

_“One did think,” madam Saidin said, clearly part of the conspiracy, “that after dealing with that unpleasant woman this noon it was a good day for a traditional food.”_

I was delighted by the pizza my first read through, as were most readers, I find. One assumes it tickled the author’s fancy since pizza has persisted in future books. This cook isn’t Bindanda, though. This cook is described as very traditional and proper, and presumably female. Do you suppose they watch the Mospheiran version of the Food Network on intercepted TV broadcasts? We know they intercept TV broadcasts. Now I have this image of five or seven atevi servants crowded around a TV watching human cooking shows and trying to interpret just by watching. Picking up lots of food-related vocabulary.

_They had tomatoes and potatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs on Mospheira they didn’t allow to cross the strait uncooked, for fear of seeds and starts and the mainland ecology, although atevi who’d tried tomatoes found something in tomatoes and potatoes and peppers they relished,_

Because, (as I’m sure the author is aware but perhaps Bren is not) all of those plants are in the nightshade family and contain varying amounts of alkaloid compounds, which is why humans don’t eat potato fruit, and why you’re not supposed to each green potatoes. Humans *can* metabolize certain alkaloids just find, which is why we have no trouble eating tomatoes and chocolate. The reason dogs can’t eat chocolate = alkaloids.

The ship calls.

_“Local daybreak’s easy to figure. We left your clock when we landed.”_

Confirmed then that the atevi planet does not run on a 24 hour day?

 

Chapter 13-

_“I’ve got a very little of a few languages,” Graham said, on the phone patch-through. “I’m as close as we could come. I’m a history hobbyist.  The other of use, going to the human population—she’s got all the technical background you want, but no study in languages at all.”_

Which is a lie, but we find out he’s lying about a fair number of things to Bren from here through Precursor so that’s fine. He and Yolanda both studied languages together he says later on, but what makes sense is how protective the ship is of their women. They sent Jase to the place they believed was more dangerous.

_“Are they—easy to get along with? Can you talk to regular atevi? Or are you pretty well guarded?”_

_“I deal mostly with government people, but not exclusively, Atevi are honest, loyal to their associates, occasionally obscure, and occasionally blunt to the point of embarrassment. I’ll be delighted to have another human face besides the one in the mirror, but I don’t live a deprived life here._

Well, more ‘guarded’ than he was two months ago but with more chance to talk to ‘regular atevi’ so take your pick, Jase.

_Jason Graham claimed twenty-eight as old Earth measured years. The faxed-down information that preceded the call gave his persona record – his and his companion’s, Yolanda Mercheson, thirty-one and an engineer trainee._

I think in the next book they give Jase’s age in atevi years which should give us a comparison but could honestly be retcon. And why is Yolanda three years older than he is? If Ramirez ordered eight or ten of Taylor’s Children born wouldn’t they be a little closer in age? I mean maybe not depending on the availability of willing mothers; Yolanda’s mother had to be fairly young, for her to have another daughter 15 or more years younger than Yolanda is. Or maybe the entire bio they sent down is a straight up lie- Yolanda an engineer trainee?

_Hell, he wasn’t the first human in the world to marry a job, break off a human relationship. He talked to a human being he marginally responded to and all fo a sudden his brain was scrambled and he was facing that parachute drop along with Jase Graham as if he had his own life riding on that chute opening.  All those forbidden things he’d disciplined himself to write off, except Barb, who’d turned out as temporary as he’d planned at the start of their association, and he couldn’t fault that in Barb. He was the one who’d gotten too close, broken the rules—_

Yeah, the unreasonable rules you set for yourself of “don’t get too close to anyone ever so you don’t get hurt,” those rules?

 

Chapter 14-

Bren does a press conference and sweetly explains to all the school children that no machines are going to swoop down from the sky to kill people.

He sends Ilisidi a note accepting a breakfast invite. Note that later in the series it’s pointed out that breakfast and morning tea are for intimate associates. Lunches and dinners being more formal respectively.

_“Is it too forward?” he asked Tano, his arbiter of protocols. “Tell Cenedi to read it and send it back if it won’t be well-received. One doesn’t know how far I dare go with the dowager. But I esteem her greatly.”_

I feel like Cenedi spends a lot of time sighing and rolling his eyes.

_And back came the message from Ilisidi herself, saying, “If we were more reckless we would cause rumors, nand’paidhi. Come early on the fifteenth. Watch the dawn with me. Let us worry the nost old woman of the balcony next. I know she suspects the worst._

He calls Barb and they fight and he muses about whether he’s any better off then Paul.

_Barb had given him years of waiting around—he’d not cared—well, not asked— who else she spent her time with; it hadn’t been his business._

Implying that they had an open relationship? Barb doesn’t seem like the type to agree to that. UNTIL you figure that she’s probably thinking, “we can both see other people, only you’re on the continent where there _are_ no other people.” Little does she know.

_Hell of way human beings functioned. At least the ones he knew. His mother. Barb. Toby. Once could say the paidhiin had generally had trouble with their personal lives._

_Childhood memory. Himself in the living room. The wind from the sea. Mom and Dad in the bedroom. When life was perfect._

Interesting tidbit, some implications on Bren’s age when his dad split.

_And really it ought to be hysterically funny, the misery he’d suffered, when just reading the damn instructions would have set him free—_

Bren’s protestations that he doesn’t need a doctor are probably familiar to Jago, I suspect lots of Guild do that. “Ok, everyone gets basic first aid training, because you’re all idiots.”

_And he remembered, while Jago’s hands were sliding very comfortingly along his backbone, that Banichi had joked about Jago’s curiosity from the very start._

_…and that he was alone, and that the temptation more than intellectually dawning in the forebrain—was already settled and willing in the hind-brain, and beginning to interfere with his ability to think at all._

 

_“One need say nothing, Bren-ji. No is sufficient.”_

_“No. It’s not. It’s not, Jago.”_

_“It seems simple. Yes. No.”_

Despite Bren’s issues I solidly appreciated Jago’s notions of consent, made more important by the fact that a LOT of Cherryh’s books involve seriously dubious consent.

I think I’ve been shorting Jago’s motivations in this scene forever: I just realized she shuts the servants out, goes and gets whatever salve she uses on Bren’s shoulder and then *falls asleep* there for however many hours. Falls asleep watching him sleep? Like, of course everyone is talking about it the next day she literally spent half the night in his room.

Chapter 15-

Bren flies out to the observatory to get his math lesson. But first, more worry,

_It was certainly against Departmental regulations. It was certainly foolish. It was compromising of the paidhi’s impartiality. It was—_

_\--just damned stupid. The paidhi was supposed to be free of biases, influences and emotional decisions._

How long has he been deluding himself that he’s still neutral?

100% believable that there’s a rulebook somewhere in the Foreign Office that does include the rule, “No sex with atevi,” because humans are what we are, and also that Bren is, as he speculates, absolutely not the first to break that rule.

A lot of little bitty things here, the old diesel train engines in the mountains that can’t be replaced with electric because of the steep grades, things about the observatory and the students.  There’s poetry and singing.

_“I miss Malguri,” he said to them, by way of explanation. He didn’t think they justly should miss the place, Algini in particular, with his bandages—and he had to ask himself what Algini could do, slow-moving as he still was, if there was a security problem._

My sweet summer child. You doubt Algini’s competency?

_“the path of light is not economical.”_

When my grandfather died, I acquired a chunk of his classic sci-fi and some non-fiction science books. I feel much the same reading the explanations of folded space in this book as I did trying to parse Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” when I was a teenager.

Chapter 16-

Bren is lost in thought with Ilisidi and she seems to find his absent-mindedness curious. They discuss the politics of the situation. I love the notion that both Tabini and Ilisidi (who, I feel is not in any way less capable in math than she is in any other arena) are, essentially, atheists.

_“I could have lived quite content without these ridiculous numbers. Or, I will tell you, lord Geigi’s despondent messages.”_

_“Despondent?”_

He confuses her or offends her. Bren’s not sure which, I’m not even sure which. She clearly finds him a puzzle for her formidable intellect. Just because he’s NOT trying to lie to her? And she hasn’t figured out yet that he really is just that earnest and innocent in certain things. She’s figured it out in later years, in ‘Destroyer’ when she says “purity defines you,” and embarrasses the hell out of him. Now, he’s still a mystery. I picture her going to Tabini and asking what the hell the paidhi is up to, and Tabini kind of smugly telling her that he’s probably up to exactly what he claims he is, he just gets these ideas into his head sometimes and won’t be deterred, it’s kind of adorable.

_Let me tell you, dowager-ji, one secret truth of humans: we have self-interest, and truly selfish and wicked humans can be far more selfish than atevi psychology can readily comprehend.”_

Is man’chi why the feudal system works on into capitalism with atevi? Because aijiin *have* that biological drive to gather their people around them and take care of them, whereas human ‘leaders’ are completely capable of feeling nothing at all in the cold frozen pit of hell they call a heart and condemn their own constituents to death and poverty to line their own pockets?

_The wonder was she hadn’t poisoned him. And he was attached to Ilisidi—he didn’t know exactly how it had happened,_

Would you like a list? I have a list.

_but he was upset at her accusation of him as he’d be if he’d somehow crossed the other atevi he’d grown close to._

_Which didn’t include, somehow, Tabini. Not in that sense of reliance and intimacy._

No, but in English anyway we have ‘love’ do so much of the grunt work for so many different associations. What he feels toward Tabini is probably closer to man’chi. I have this quasi-headcanon that I can’t decide if I like that aijiin are slightly empathic.

_Not in the sense that—That he’d damn well regretted Jago had left his room night before last, experimentation untried. And he was mortally glad Jago had stayed out of his close company the last two days. But he longed to find her alone and find out what she did think, and whether she was upset, or embarrassed, which he didn’t want; and didn’t want to risk the relationship he had with her and Banichi without which—he was completely—_

_Alone.  And scared stiff._

Chapter 17-

_The hero’s touch. The heroics he’d accused Hanks of, that Hanks had come back at him with- and by what he saw now, Hands had had the right of it._

This only just now occurred to you? After you were ready to die in Malguri to keep Mospheira’s secrets? The program is teaching paidhiin they’re obligated to commit suicide to save human civilization and then telling you not to be heroes? That makes no fucking sense.

_No, the ship said, they had visited another star. There was no base at Maudette._

The Ragi name for which is Esili, which is a lovely name and which is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.

_Stockpiles._

_Flash of dark. Terror. Pain. Cold metal and a looming shadow, asking him… accusing him…_

_Stockpiles-of goods critical to a space program. The argument of Ilisidi’s allies. Ilisidi’s constituency, the constituency Ilisidi had ostensibly betrayed – but never count an ateva to have changes sides completely._

Bren’s having traumatic flashbacks and all over a very bad night, but I feel the strength of his response speaks to deeper issues, probably both from his parents and the whole “it might not be in your power as paidhi to save the world, but if everything goes to hell it’s probably going to be your fault,” notion. He writes a letter to Tabini.

_“But I am dismayed to know now that I was asked about this matter in Malguri and did not at the time realize its import, nor recall it in preparing my estimates and advisement to you. I am completely to blame for any negative result.”_

I feel like he’s way overreacting here but I’m always blown away by the fact that he doesn’t even try to be passive aggressive and blame Ilisidi and Tabini, like “if anyone in the last two weeks on either Mospheira or the continent had just bothered to fucking tell me what was going on, maybe I would have figured this out sooner, but since everyone on both sides of the strait assumes I’m going to sell them out…”

_“I feel I have no recourse now but to write the dowager and I have given a firm pledge to do so. But I shall delay my response and take the disgrace on myself for doing so, in hopes that events or greater wisdom than mine will find a means for you to secure your own interest in advance of my fulfilling a rash promise that may have placed me in a position incompatible with your best interests. If I were placed under arrest, I could not send such a message aiji-ma.”_

_He sent the message, via his remote, to the aiji’s fax, rather than using courier, if for nothing else, that propriety mattered less than speed of getting that message next door._

He is completely off his rocker. Why would a fax be faster than a courier walking next door?

_From frenetic, the place had grown too quiet. He wanted company. But Banichi and Jago were off about various business, Tabini was probably dealing with the matter he’d dropped in Tabini’s lap. Tabini was probably too angry to speak to him, or even preparing orders for his arrest, as he’d invited – who knew?_

What probably was ACTUALLY happening in Tabini’s apartment right then:

 

**Tabini read the letter and the transcript that Naidiri had handed to him.   Documents that had, against all precedence of formality been faxed by the paidhi. Then he read the letter again.**

**“Naidiri, have we forgotten to arrest the paidhi-aiji?” Tabini asked with a sigh.**

**“Not that one is aware of, aiji-ma,” Naidiri said cautiously. “Unless there is news I have not heard.”**

**“Is my grandmother still in her apartment?”**  
**“Word has come that she is preparing to leave, aiji-ma. That she is headed to Taiben tonight.”**

**“Send a copy of this letter and the transcript to her, nadi, and get me Banichi.”**

**Within a quarter of an hour Banichi arrived in the aiji’s apartments.**

**“Aiji-ma,” Banichi said with a bow.**

**“Nadi,” Tabini said, handing him the fax. “Why is the paidhi-aiji sending us letters suggesting that we should have him arrested?"**

 

 

_But most of all he was intrigued by madam Saidin’s unprecedented personal conversation. The book, almost certainly a favorite. She’d felt the tension in the house and in the guest- and the protector of the house had followed her inquisitorial duty, perhaps; or just- counting that word of doings in the house HAD once found their way to Ilisidi-  he was too damn critical._

No, for once Bren is right, I think. I am convinced that Saidin reports to the aiji dowager. Ilisidi has been associated with Tatiseigi so far back that it seems completely possible to me that Saidin might even have been a loan from Ilisidi to the Atigeini fifty years ago, who knows? Also _SHE RUNS THE HOUSEHOLD AND SHE READ THE DAMN FAX YOU JUST SENT_ you absolute houseplant.

Bren muses on an incident from his childhood, which as far as I can recall is not brought up again, except for the bit about it being the reason his mother took them skiing in subsequent years. It is still Mount Allen Thomas.

Chapter 18-

Barb calls and they bitch at each other in a passive-aggressive manner. Bren wins points by not deliberately saying something hurtful.

_He knew pressuring an opponent down to the limit, and a behavior that twined itself around late-evening emotionally fraught messages instead of level-headed waking hour phone calls for an ex-lover assumed a pattern that really, really set off alarms in his gut; a pattern that argued that his subconscious had been better informed on the feelings he’d been getting than his waking brain had been for the last several years._

Bren calls Hanks. Honestly this was the point at which I think I decided I liked Bren as a person, that he was willing to believe the best of Deana and give her a chance and believe that she was the kind of person he was. You know, the truly bad person believes other people are as bad as them, but good people like Bren, yeah they may get taken in occasionally but it’s because they need to believe other people are as good as they are.

Hanks gets ‘kidnapped,’ Tabini and Damiri’s conversation is some of my favorite dialogue, there’s a great deal of experimentation with the forms of address and name-suffixes. Tabini addresses Damiri in turn as nai-ji, 'Miri-ji, 'Miri-daja, Daja-ji and (my personal favorite) Lily-daja. Which I feel like gives us a bit of a glimpse into their relationship.

 _"Don't caution me! This is intolerable! Our human guest can express his shock-so wherein can civilized atevi accept such goin_ _gs on? I do not, I DO not, aiji-ma! Fire at random into the premises? Shoot the servant wholesale along with the target/ Naidiri, Sagimi is this Guild work or is it not?_

Naidiri being the head of Tabini's personal guard, Sagimi by assumption being either his partner or senior of his second pair. Both presumed deceased in the coup, so it's less relevant that they don't show up much in the next few books. (Unless you're writing fanfic, ahem.)

 

_“I may never get my staff back. They’re quite besotted.”_

_“I—hope I’ve done nothing improper, daja-ma.”_

_“Bren-paidhi. They dream nightly of you doing something improper. I’ve heard the reports.”_

I'm sure she has. 

 

Chapter 19 –

_“Nadi,” Saidin said, with a bow, “please come back safely.”  
“I promise you I’ll try to do that, nadi-ji. Not least to please you.”_

_“You are a scandalous flatterer, nand’paidhi.”_

It would be nice to believe Bren’s efforts to be polite are misinterpreted as flirting, but he clearly enjoys it and is a menace to himself.

_“Likewise another of close association with the Kadigidi—Saigimi of the Marid Tasigin, which is the center of an unwholesome sub-association of suspicious interests. Oil is their unifying interest. Oil. And Talidi province.”_

_“Talidi,” he said to Banichi, “is your province.”_

Banichi is still from Talidi province, which is in the Tasigin Marid. I have series issues with the way this is overlooked in the series because this provides a huge potential of interesting issues which are never addressed. Why did Banichi leave and join the guild? Is there not some greater story involved in his finding man’chi with Tabini and Bren than with the clan he’s from? Is Jago’s mother from the Marid or is she from Shejidan or somewhere else? (Cherryh has said on her blog, at least partially in jest, that it’s a Guild secret.) With what we find out later of the Marid being very traditional and not big on education, it would also explain why Banichi didn’t know or particularly care that the sun is a star. It also explains why Tabini would send Banichi and Jago after Saigimi in the next book – if they’re from that area, they can blend in better.

_“Perhaps a human who flings himself down mountains for recreation could think her a challenge. But one cautions you, most earnestly, nadi, this is not without risk, this flirtation with the aiji-dowager.”_

It’s more than his tendency for suicidal acts, Banichi-ji, though one is not sure if wanting to be adopted is any saner. 

 _“She,_ [Damiri] _we think, favors it, being quite strongly attracted to Tabini, who is—“ Banichi seemed to search for a word “—a man of some natural favor with various women.”_

Tabini’s a player.

_Attaching affections to atevi was a foolish, personally and professionally dangerous mistake. One could be like Wilson. One could forget how to love anyone. One could stop doing it._

Some humans might be able to do it, Bren, but you ain’t one of them.

_“Thank you,” he said to Banichi. “Did I say thank you? I meant to.”  
“My—“_

_“—job. Yes, dammit. I know that. But prefer me just adequately, Banichi-ji, to Hanks-paidhi.”_

_“Fervently so, Bren-ji.”_

_“Still too little,” he said. “Still too little Banichi. I’d have let you shoot me before I took a chance it wasn’t you tonight. Does that reassure you?”  
“Far from it.” _

EVERYONE IS TRYING VERY HARD.                     

 _Atevi hadn’t a word for lonely. There was something like orphan. There was something like renegade. Otherwise they couldn’t_ be _alone—and knew, better than humans, he supposed, why they did things. Psychiatry was a science they hadn’t practiced, and still didn’t, possibly because no atevi_ [ sic] _would confide outside his man’chi, possibly because, among them, there was just pathology._

Which is unfortunately, honestly, considering that by book 12 multiple important characters including THE ENTIRE RULING FAMILY are canonically suffering from greater or lesser degrees of PTSD, do NOT even get me started.

 _“But you are_ _not ,” Banichi insisted, as if it still troubled him, “of my man’chi. Nor, I hope physically attracted to me—which is your other choice. Jago, on the other hand—does not entail necessary loyalty to me. Or does it, among humans?”_

The logical leap here being that, OH maybe among humans developing man’chi towards a mate means you adopt yourself into their family, that almost makes sense. Or something ?? humans are so confusing, ugh.  i.e. Banichi flat out believes that Bren knows Jago is his daughter. Clearly, they think Tabini told Bren, and clearly Tabini assumes they told Bren, and I can’t get over my humor at Bren spending three or more years with these guys and both making comments that don’t make sense to anyone and everyone just kind of writing him off as “I still don’t’ understand humans, honestly.”

_Jago touched him, not in an unknowing way, and he hadn’t in small idle seconds, forgotten the feeling of her hands, the sensation that shivered through his nerves and said… he needed. He wanted not to have been responsible. He wanted Jago to have ignored warnings and gone ahead with… whatever atevi did with their lovers, which had become in his thoughts a burning curiosity._

Bren’s got himself a little dubcon fantasy going on, surprise, surprise.

 

Chapter 20-

The flowers from Geigi, and everyone else as well.

_“I thought the new policy was to tell the paidhi the truth.”_

_“No. One resolved to brief the paidhi on matters regarding his safety. Not on operations.”_

_“Dammit, Banichi!”_

_“Information which might tempt him to assist. Or make impossible his innocent reaction to other information. You have such an expressive face, Bren-ji.”_

The intercepted transmission from Hanks, and the history of the Padi valley and the switch of the election vote from the tashrid (house of Lords) to the hasdrawad (house of Commons).

_“Five households,” Jago said. “Before there were humans in the world, there were five principle landholders in the Padi Valley.”_

Taiben, Atigeini, Kadigidi, who are the other two? Ajuri is part of the northern association, not actually in the Padi Valley from what we understand later.

_“But Tabini’s house settled the Treaty. By donating its lands to the refugees, from the war.”  
“Keeping only the estate at Taiben—not alone for its nearness to Shejidan, on the Alujis.”_

So the Ragi claimed the west coast, before the War of the Landing? and gave those lands to the Edi refugees from Mospheira. Except the Marid believed those lands were theirs. I honestly can’t tell how much of this is continuity or just my not understanding what’s being explained.

_“But that Damiri-daja of the Padi Valley Atigeini, suddenly came into the open as Tabini’s lover—was directly related to the appearance of the ship, and to your safe return from Malguri.”_

_“My return.”_

_“It meant,” Banichi said, “ostensibly that she felt Tabini-aiji was likely to be strengthened by this even in the heavens—not overthrown.”_

I won’t post the text of Deana’s letter because it just pisses me off, the bitch.

_He read it a third time simply to absorb the tenor and content, to try to strip out emotional reactions, and to ask himself honestly whether there was any remove, even astronomically remote or conceivable likelihood that Deana was actually right and he was wrong._

Like Harry Dresden, I love Bren constantly wondering if he’s doing the right thing or deluding himself. Love it.

_“I should have shot this woman,” Jago muttered, “on the subway platform. I would have saved the aiji and the Association a great deal of bother.”_

Chapter 21-

They get to Taiben.

_“Game of darts?” Banichi said when he’d had a chance to catch his breath and sip half a cup of tea. It was one human game atevi had taken to with a passion approaching that for television._

Along with chess, and poker, but not slingshots, apparently or golf. Golf is not at all kabiu, so no surprise there, what with the maintenance and water requirements for its artificial environment. But what *I* would have introduced is basketball because I would love to see an atevi basketball team. I would love to see an Assassins' Guild basketball league in fact. 

 

_“I don’t think you can miss,” Bren said._

You want the people who are assigned to keep your dumb ass alive to have WORSE aim?

 

_Tabini, who was very prone to notice the ladies in any gathering, was an absolute gentleman_

Though Tabini is noted later has having been quite a bit more cautious about such things than his father, (or perhaps that’s me reading between the lines where I want to see them,) my personal headcanon is that the reason Tabini gave Banichi and Jago to Bren was as part of his negotiations for a contract with Damiri— that despite his grandmother’s reputation (or perhaps because of it) she was uncomfortable with the idea of Tabini having a woman in his aishid.

_He’d talked about Barb with Tabini before. They’d discussed physical attractiveness and the concept of romantic love versus—‘mainaigi,’ which rather well answered to a young ateva’s hormonal foolishness._

If any of my attempts to write this come out as anything OTHER than horrifyingly awkward, y’all will be the first to know.

_"My mother- she's very human. She's very temperous."_

_"Ill-omened gods, Bren, I have grandmother. They could amuse each other for hours!"_

_He had to laugh. "A disaster, aiji-ma. I fear- a disaster. And my brother- if he couldn't have his Friday golf game, I think he'd pine and die."_

Why Fridays? Could have just said 'his weekly golf game,' so why do we still have Fridays on an alien planet? I don't know; it bothers me more than it should. 

 

_“I understand you’d no idea of Saidin’s position.”_

_He didn’t breathe but what Tabini had a report of it._

_“I’m completely embarrassed. No, aiji-ma. I hadn’t”_

_“Retired, actually,” Tabini said, “But an estimable force. If I can trust Naidiri’s estimate—and I wouldn’t be living with the lovely lady sharing my bed if I hadn’t certain assurances passed through the Guild—she answers primarily to Damiri. Only to Damiri, in point of fact.”_

Which I don’t believe, and doesn’t make sense in light of later books, so either retcon, or someone is wrong/lying. I still figure Ilisidi factors into it. But all things being equal I never understood why Saidin didn’t recommend people to attend Damiri when she dismisses her Ajuri staff at the end of “Intruder,” except that her man’chi really is elsewhere and Damiri doesn’t want her uncle’s people on staff.

 

_“Where is man’chi, paidhi-ji?”_

_“Mine? One thought atevi didn’t ask each other such questions.”  
“An aiji may ask.”_

He was sure until now; is it Ilisidi’s influence he worries about? Sharing his human with his grandmother. Good think they’re both pretty liberal folks. Humans being naturally poly and all that. More on that later.

 

_“I’ve made you uneasy,” Jago said. “Bren-paidhi, I was stupidly mistaken. I apologize. I most sincerely apologize.”_

_“Nothing,” he said desperately, “nothing could make me distrust you, in any way. You affected me very profoundly—that’s all I know how to say. I’m not sure what you think. I’m not sure what I think. I can’t think at the moment, there’s just too much, too much going on. There will be for a while. Do I make any sense at all? It’s not you. It’s me.”_

Do you think the “It’s not you, it’s me” cliché exists in atevi culture too?

 

_“No, nand’paidhi. I am not offended. I find no possible way to be offended.”_

_“Can I say—at least—I’m very attracted?”_

The upshot of all this awkwardness being that he leaves the hunting lodge and forget his computer, but no worry, Banichi remembered it.

_“A peaceful man hasn’t a chance with you,” he said, and Tano patted his leg from the other side._

_“Paidhi-ji, we listen because you have good ideas. They’d do these things. So we are doing them.”_

_“Then where are we going? Around in circles to make them crazy?”_

_“If we can,” Jago said. “There’s a classified number of storm shelters, where we can reset about an hour or so, move around again.”_

Classified, but not classified enough that Tabini could reliably use them when on the run after the coup? Or did he, for a while, hide in Taiben in the secret storm shelters?

Also, at some point *does* Bren come up with some tactical idea that the atevi wouldn’t think of?

Chapter 22 – 

Action chapter. The whole mood and interaction here is different than the later books, Tabini seems to have no compunctions about bringing Bren along into a firefight, and Banichi and Jago seem all too easy to convince to let him shoot at things. Although perhaps his haphazard performance in this instance convinces them he’s not cut out for Guild work.  Regardless. There is lots of shooting and the opposition sets the grasslands on fire.

_And at least fifteen of what she called “her young men,” on towering long-legged shapes with the flash of war-brass about their jaws, short rooting-tusks capped with deadly metal._

Ilisidi shows up to the rescue. With the mecheiti, which, how Does one move an entire herd of mecheiti from the east? I mean, plane or train one would assume. I can’t imagine they like travelling by either method though. Also, a Google search confirmed that I was not the first person to dub this ending a ‘deus ex mecheita,’ which pleases me.

_Lord Geigi looked straight at him. “Nand’paidhi! One is very glad you find you in good health.”_

_“Indeed, I –received your messages, lord Geigi. With great appreciation. Hanks?”_

_“Get me away from these people,” Hanks said, in Mosphei’. “Bren get me loose!”_

_Hanks’ hands were tied. To the pad-rings.  “Hanks, he said. “Shut up.”_

Again, I need more Bren telling people to shut up and fuck off in the later books. I’m just saying.

_“These were members of an opposition,” Cenedi found it incumbent on him to say. “those that surrendered go home. Tabini’s men will see to it. We were aware ‘Sidi-ji was under suspicion.”  
“I knew it wasn’t you,” he said. “Cenedi-ji, you have far more finesse. You wouldn’t have shot up the porcelains.”_

Tabini and Ilisidi bicker, I won’t paste it all here but it’s delightful as always, I enjoy every time they argue.

Chapter 23-

_There was one stream in kilometers all about, maybe within a day’s ride, and the lander found it—landed up to its hatch in water._

More water in one place than Jase and Yolanda have ever seen in their lives. Also, confronted with atevi, mecheiti and an open sky, all at once. And that’s as much denouement as we get.


End file.
